


Sharks, Assemble!

by kellyh000



Series: 00Q fanfiction translations [9]
Category: James Bond (Craig movies), James Bond (Movies)
Genre: IKEA, M/M, Translation Available, 中文翻译 | Translation in Chinese
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-06
Updated: 2021-02-15
Packaged: 2021-03-05 05:29:22
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 3,565
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25109260
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kellyh000/pseuds/kellyh000
Summary: Lovers usually gift each other with bundles of roses, sickeningly sweet chocolate, expensive cuff links and silk ties.But we all know Bond and Q aren't the type to color inside the lines.“So, Bond/ Q, what the HELL is this bloody thing?”
Relationships: James Bond & Q, James Bond/Q
Series: 00Q fanfiction translations [9]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1767181
Comments: 22
Kudos: 83





	1. chapter one

**Author's Note:**

  * For [cete_ruinam](https://archiveofourown.org/users/cete_ruinam/gifts).
  * A translation of [鲨鱼总动员](https://archiveofourown.org/works/25005508) by [cete_ruinam](https://archiveofourown.org/users/cete_ruinam/pseuds/cete_ruinam). 



> This story is originally by cete_ruinam, thanks for writing this story for me.

It first happened after Bond went to Sweden on a mission.

“What the hell is this?”

“Take a guess, Q. What does it look like?”

Q raised his head from the SR25 rifle in his hands to the smiling agent—and frowned at the _thing_ on his desk.

“That is a shark.”

“Yes.”

“An IKEA shark.”

“A souvenir for you, darling.”

“You bought me an IKEA shark from an IKEA in Sweden.”

“I lost my gun and comms, Q, I had to find something that was big enough replace them.”

Q took a breath, and looked at Bond with a ‘I sincerely do not understand why am I wasting my time talking to you’ look on his face, and turned on his computer before refocusing on his equipment. A piece of local news in Älmhult, titled _The Ghost Driver: A Mysterious, Drowned Sports Car with No Driver_ , made Bond raise his eyebrows in response.

“A ten-pound stuffed shark does not cover the cost of the prototype that you drove into the river. Net-worth and in body volume speaking, Double-Oh Seven.”

But since that day, the Quartermaster had tolerated the presence of the grimacing silly thing in his mortgaged flat and had allowed it to occupy a part of his desk. There was no use crying over spilt milk—Walking out of MI6 with the thing in his arms had inspired enough gossip flying around that the Quartermaster got wind of them next morning.

Technically, Q should have stuffed the apology present into some drawer in his office or just toss it into the bin without second thoughts. Of course, he knew it was just a terrible prank by Bond, and pranks never worked on the youngest Quartermaster of MI6. But that night, finishing his long day of work, Q hugged his messenger bag in his arms and sat down in his chair to think consider it seriously for ten minutes. Just as all the ridiculous souvenirs Bond brought back, Q came to the conclusion of leaving a shark in the office was not a professional conduct.

So when Moneypenny gave him an overly-bright smile in the hallways the next morning, Q willed himself not to sigh, and reminded himself (again) that it was not allowed to murder Double-Oh Seven. Not because it would definitely break some kind of law if he killed a coworker; it was because everyone, and sadly the Quartermaster himself included, fucking love the blond-haired MI6 agent.

“Don’t worry, Q, it suits you—Bond has a good taste when it comes to picking out gifts.”

“For an agent who just wasted thirty million pounds again, apparently so.”

Moneypenny chuckled, and pulled a file from the pile of documents in the Quartermaster’s hands before opening the office door.

“I’ll pass this to M and tell Double-Oh Seven that you’ve handed it in for him—you really should stop kidding yourself, genius.”

Q sighed and left Mallory’s office in resignation—the file was a request for leave and an application to be a field agent’s next of kin.

Unfortunately, two months later—when the Quartermaster was almost used to having the silly stuffed shark in his arms while typing away on his computer at night, Q realized, in great pity, that he did not have time for the cheap apology present anymore.

Things went sideways when Bond was headed to Brazil to meet up with an informant, and it resulted in Q sitting in front of his computer for forty-two hours as Bond fought and fled for his life, and then cutting into the security feed from an observation deck to watch MI6’s top agent and their target tumbling down a cliff.

Reasonably, M’s order got to Q’s computer three minutes later: bring Double-Oh Seven back, whatever it took. Hence Tanner’s obvious hair-loss, R’s apologies to her boyfriend for working late almost every day, and moving all his daily necessities in his office by the young hacker.

After sleepless for twenty-seven days and three vertigoes, M politely and gently ordered him to go home. “I know you’re the Quartermaster, Q, but it does not mean you’re obligated to stare at the bloody screen 24/7. A day’s rest will not cause the World War Three, and I trust that R will handle things well—she will notify you the moment we get update.”

Q opened his mouth, but eventually, he nodded, and pushed the office door without a word.

It was I who drove the Quartermaster home that afternoon. A poor choice Q thought to himself, judging by the dark circles under the section chief’s eyes and the overstepping on the accelerator so many times that it felt like she could drive the car to the opposite lane anytime.

“You’ve got to trust him, Q,” after the Quartermaster hugged his friend in thanks, Kelly shut the car door, and peered out the window before driving away. “James Bond came back to life in Istanbul once, and I think he has a better reason than ‘the Empire needs me’ to climb out from whatever hell he’s in now.”

Q did not give her a reply; he gave the head of I branch his trademark charming smile as a goodbye. (“Ring me—I’ll be there if you need me.”)

He opened his door with his low-blood sugar included trembling hands, rubbed the two cats’ ears distractedly when they approached him—clearly the neighbors took good care of them during his absence, and threw himself on the bed in exhaustion.

Minutes later, Q belatedly realized that the blue thing next to him was not supposed to be in his bedroom.

The frequency Bond appeared in his flat had dramatically increased after he was cleared to remove the bandages on his hand. The blond-haired agent took a whole morning to change the locks, and used a bundle of roses and a week of Chinese take-out to calm his humiliated lover, and successfully filled Q’s half-empty closet with two dozens of Tom Ford suits.

Bond’s frequent visits prompted Q into finding a better place to hide the IKEA shark—he had to cover himself as he told Bond that he’d threw the gift away the day after he received it.

Q did not keep a habit to hold anything in his sleep—for God’s sake, he was not a five-year-old with insecurities, but after working for such a long period of time, the young hacker could not find the energy in him to get up again and up the ridiculous shark back in place, and did not bother to find out why it was on the bed in the first place: the cat fur and scratch marks all over it had told him the answer. It was the fourth time the door of his storage room broke, and every time it happened, it meant cardboard boxes and shattered alcohol bottles all over the floor with two culprits snugging against Q’s feet in a desperate attempt to win back his favor. Luckily, usually the Quartermaster did not have to clean up the mess himself: in fact, it was Bond who took care of things the previous three incidents.

It seemed the Double-Oh agent’s charisma worked on more than one species—he could even have the two cats jump into the water willingly during their bath.

After a long silence, Q sighed, placed a kiss on the shark’s head and closed his eyes tiredly.

Three days later, unsurprisingly, in M’s words, Q saw the Double-Oh agent with sunken eyes and sharp cheekbones wrapped in bandages from head to toe. According to Moneypenny, Bond practically shoved the door of Mallory’s office violently, slammed the bloody intel on the head of MI6’s desk, and proceeded to stand in the middle of the room with a weird stance—given that his leg was badly burned—until the medics arrived.

The return of Double-Oh Seven did not stir anything up at Six; the people who worked at the agency were accustomed to Bond disappearing and even had a betting pool for it—despite the prohibitions against gambling on _Code of Conduct for Employees._

So when Q entered Medical, he saw a beeping heart monitor, a dripping IV, a neatly-folded suit on the nightstand and the Double-Oh agent who gave him a typical Bond-ish smile.

“I don’t think you got enough time to go to Sweden on this mission, Double-Oh Seven.”

“There’s IKEA in Brazil, Cute—I assumed you did not prefer a Neymar keychain.”

—There was another stuffed shark on the only chair in the ward, just like the previous one.

Q did not sit, instead, he pushed his glasses and picked up the ridiculous souvenir. “Perhaps you’ve noticed that this one’s no different than the last one.”

“Of course not.”

“Versatility is required in apology presents.”

“Your cats destroyed the first one, darling, and I think you don’t dislike it as much as you claim to be.”

“Moneypenny told you that?”

“Clearly.”

Q sighed and sat the IKEA shark back down. He bent down and kissed the corner of his lover’s mouth.

“Don’t be smart, James,” when the Quartermaster straightened himself again, Bond saw the slyness shining in his gorgeous green eyes. “My taste is a bit more antique, and I think you know exactly what I mean.”

**-epilogue-**

The next morning, Q stormed in the Double-Oh agent’s ward and stood before his bed with a ragged shark in his hands.

Bond, who was attempting to turn the page of his book with one hand, raised his head to smile at his lover. “Q?”

“…” The Quartermaster took a deep breath, peeled the shark’s belly open—quite literally—and took out three shards of a Walther and an undamaged radio.

“I really, really hate you right now.”


	2. chapter two

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Although Q was not into declaring his love straight-forwardly, giving out presents was not something only Bond could do. Even if when the present was not exactly something you would call ‘typical’.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Not sponsored by IKEA; I just love IKEA sharks too much.  
> p.s.They're blue.

It happened after Q went to Sweden on a mission. 

Yes, Q on a mission—I know what you’re thinking, this isn’t a typo, thank you very much. 

But naturally, compared to going in the field himself and handle things the old-fashioned way for absolutely no reason, the Quartermaster preferred to say in his comfortable office and enjoy his tea and cupcakes while causing unsalvageable damage to those who caused England trouble on his computer. But that did not mean that Q did not know how to blow up a building or using extreme measures to hijack confidential papers or shoot someone in the chest with a Walther—the truth was, the Quartermaster got a perfect score in shooting during the two-week self-defense training of MI6’s administrative staff. 

Hence, if some poor criminal mistook Q as a defenseless tech geek, well, God bless him. 

So that was why Q had to do fieldwork every now and then, especially when the mission required high-tech support—afraid of flying was not an excuse to decline the mission. 

Under normal circumstances, Bond would accompany Q should he was required to leave London: what people said did not matter to him; the Double-Oh agent was worried his skinny Quartermaster might got dragged into a dungeon by some evil villain one day. 

But this mission to Sweden was not dangerous, and Bond just broke his leg days ago, so with a kiss to seal all his lover’s protests and unsatisfaction, Q packed all his laptops (he has four of them) in his suitcase and boarded the plane to Älmhult alone. 

—Which was the main reason why Bond was sitting in his bed, frowning at the gloating Quartermaster and the _thing_ on the nightstand. 

“Do you mind telling me what this is?” 

“Use your brain, Double-Oh Seven. You broke your leg, not your head. What does it look like?” 

“That’s a shark. An IKEA shark.” 

“A very accurate observation.” 

“You bought me a shark from IKEA in Sweden, Cute.” 

“Oh, I thought I could tolerate its’ color (https[://www.ikea.com/us/en/p/blahaj-soft-toy-shark-90373590/)](https://www.ikea.com/us/en/p/blahaj-soft-toy-shark-90373590/) , compared to the grey ones. You’ve bought me a lot of souvenirs, Bond. I had to find something that was big enough to repay you.” 

Bond sighed and picked up the IKEA shark from the nightstand. He kneaded the shark’s head distractedly, but the next second, he gave Q his trademark smile. “I thought you had thrown all the lockets I gave you away, darling. I’m curious, where are you hiding them?” 

At first, Bond showed no preference to the stuffed shark—a cheap toy never was a standard accessory for the top agent of MI6. 

But since that day, the Double-Oh agent endured the presence of (in Bond’s words,) that silly thing inside his empty flat, letting it grimace at him and the whiskeys in his hand and taking up a part of his couch. 

He would even rub its’ blue fluffy head when he was drunk enough. 

Of course, it did not affect Bond’s tough image—Bond deleted all his previous lovers’ numbers after he started to have an office romantic relationship and had never brought anyone who was not Q home since. 

Bond should’ve cast the souvenir in a corner or just let it drown into the bottom of the ocean in Ukraine alongside the fragments of his blasted Beretta. 

He knew with absolute clarity that this was just a pay-back prank from Q for ruining sixteen hidden comms in a row in such short time. 

But no, there was no way Bond would throw away a gift from Q. Any gift from the Quartermaster was invaluable. 

When Moneypenny gave him a blinding smile in the hallways the next day, Bond merely shook his head and gave her his trademark smile in return while opening the door for her. 

“Q’s breathing fire.” 

“Of course he is.” 

“You really shouldn’t have walked out of Q branch holding that thing. Everyone’s questioning him about the shark.” 

“Tell them to come ask me about the shark. I don’t mind if people talk.” 

Moneypenny smiled again and picked up an envelope from the table to pass it to Bond. 

“The details of your mission. M’s inside—he’s pissed at you for being late.” 

Bond raised his eyebrows and scanned the documents. “Tell Q don’t give me wrong directions in this mission. It would be far too dangerous.” 

And then he pushed open Mallory’s office door. 

Unfortunately, two months later, when Bond got used to having the silly stuffed shark next to his martinis whenever he was drinking at night, Bond found, quite wistfully, that he did not have time to mind the cheap souvenir. During a mission to Brazil, his informant lost his cover and got replaced by a terrorist group. It led to Bond running and fighting for his life non-stop for the next forty-two hours, and got a SIG P226 pointed to his head two minutes before the identification work Q made for him was in effect. 

The Double-Oh agent was brought to a dingy basement with a gunshot wound in his leg (since Bond tried to ambush the goon behind him when he bent down to open the car door), and cut his connection with Q. According to intel, they were exceptional at back-tracing signals. The agent’s attitude successfully pissed the head of the organization of within a brief conversation. He gave the two men by his side a few orders before leaving the bleak room which walls were crumbled and cracking in various places. 

And then there was excruciatingly long interrogations. His back turned purple and black, and there were ligature marks on his neck. Familiar-looking red blood trickled to the ground. 

“Say it!” a voice told him, “say it, and you’ll be free, you bastard!” 

Bond could not keep track of how long the interrogation went on for or how many times it happened. 

Pain was not a stranger to him, and neither was being on the brink of death. 

It was a part of MI6’s training—to get accustomed and adapt to dying and the endless pain until everything turned numb and you could not feel it anymore—or got annoyed by it, even. 

The yelling and the sounds of blunt instruments beating mere flesh filled the basement until night. The men got tired, spitted on Bond’s face, and when they slammed the door shut, it was so loud that Bond’s eardrums hurt. 

“We’ll be back tomorrow,” they told him before they left. “and we won’t be this nice.” 

Warm liquid slid into Bond’s eye. He tried to move his injured arm a bit, trying to lean onto something and make himself more comfortable. 

And then he heard Q’s voice. “Bond?” 

The next day, reasonably, in M’s words, the Double-Oh agent got carried onto a plane in coma and was rushed into the E.R., and then got transferred to the Intensive Care Unit in MI6. 

According to Moneypenny, after Q found out his signal was cut, he used five hours to recover all the Smart Blood data. Given the fact that he was ordered to wipe out the entire program two years ago, it was a miracle that Q managed to do what he did: he utilized a special forces unit without Mallory knowing and got to the wrecked building himself that night. 

It was not the first time Bond was (directly and indirectly) saved by Q; in reality, almost every MI6 employee heard about the Aston Martin that got drove into a river, the palm print-coded Walther, the Komodo dragons in Macau and the permanent immunity and favoritism from the Quartermaster—it was a fact that even Double-Oh Nine had to admit to. 

When Bond opened his eyes, he saw a steaming cup of Earl Grey, an old laptop with radiation warning signs and his lover’s black curls. 

“I didn’t know you went to my flat beforehand, Cute.” 

“There’s IKEA in Brazil, Double-Oh Seven, and you’re paying for this one—I’m sure you can still afford it.” 

—There was another blue IKEA stuffed shark, exactly like the one before. 

Bond propped himself up with the hand that was not covered in bandages and picked up the silly present and pinched its’ fin. “Of course. You have my credit card, darling. I’m sure they also take credit cards in Brazil.” 

“Shut it, Bond.” 

Q remained silent for a moment and took the IKEA shark from the agent’s hands. He bent down and kissed his lover on the corner of his mouth. “Don’t ever do that again, you reckless idiot.” 

-END- 


	3. chapter three

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "Big and safe to have at your side if you want to discover the world underneath the sea. The blue shark can swim very far, dive really deep and hear your heart beating from far away."
> 
> [\--IKEA](https://www.ikea.com/us/en/p/blahaj-soft-toy-shark-90373590/)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I never thought I’d be writing this...(This is not a translation. I myself wrote it.)  
> Inspired by a story I saw on Facebook.  
> translation in Mandarin中文翻譯連結: [here](https://archiveofourown.org/works/29465373)

Bond woke, instinctively knowing that something was wrong.

And then he realized what was wrong-he turned his head and saw his lover twisting and whining beside him.

“Q?” Bond sat up and turned on a lamp. He did not get a reply, so he placed his hand on Q’s shoulder. “What’s wrong?”

With the light, Bond could see that there were sweat and tears on Q’s face, but his eyes were closed.

“Q! Darling, wake up!” This time, Bond shook Q’s shoulders much harder.

Q’s eyes snapped open and started to thrash on the bed. Bond made nonsense soothing words and firmly but gently held him down, assuring him that he was safe.

He knew the confusion feeling of being waked from a deep dream, and not being able to tell reality from your dream, not being able to tell what time it was, where you were, what you were doing…

That excruciating moment when you were somewhat awake but still paralyzed by the fear or horror you were experiencing in your dream.

“You’re here with me, love. It was just a dream.”

“…I saw them die in front of me, I couldn’t do anything…there’s so much blood…” Q sobbed, his voice hoarse and full of guilt.

Bond knew what he was talking about. Yesterday, MI6 had lost two field operatives during a particularly dangerous mission, and Q, their handler blamed himself. He was talking to the agents via their earpieces and told them to hold on for a bit more time.

But before the rescue party got to the agents, they succumbed to their wounds. Q had been listening to the pair’s slowing breath and gasps, until there was nothing.

It had been difficult for everyone in Q-branch, but the Quartermaster took it the hardest.

Bond helped the young man sit up and handed him some tissues. The Quartermaster still looked pale and badly shaken, but he wiped his tears with his trembling hand.

“I don’t want to sleep.” Q croaked.

Bond traced the dark circles under Q’s eyes. “You need rest.”

“I feel like if I close my eyes, I’ll see blood again.”

Upon hearing ‘blood’, an idea struck Bond. “Hold on,” he pressed a kiss against Q’s temple.

He stood up, walked to the living room and immediately located what he wanted. Q’s cat was curled up against the blue shark on the couch. The cat even placed her paw on the shark as if cuddling it. Bond, with little remorse, lifted the cat’s leg and ignored her meows of protest. He carried the shark back to the bedroom, knowing the cat was following him.

He lay back down and placed the shark into Q’s arms, and the cat jumped onto the bed.

“Go back to sleep, Q." Bond carded Q’s hair gently as his lover squeezed the plushie hard and visibly relaxed. "Sharks can smell blood from hundreds of meters away, so if you dream of blood, your shark will protect you and eat your nightmares.”

-The end-


End file.
